Posts Tagged liberal education
Debugging the curriculum
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 14/06/2011
Via Bishop Hill, we learn that schools will no longer be required to teach climate change as part of the science curriculum. This is a good step, not so much because of the political controversies surrounding climate change policy, but because its inclusion helped to set a bad precedent. It has become a common tactic of influential interest groups (whether on the right or the left) to try and get their pet issues inserted into educational policy so that they can be advocated nationally to the detriment of other important content. This is one of the drivers of unnecessary centralisation in the education system. This process diminishes teachers’ professional autonomy, reduces their local accountability to parents, and forces them to waste time complying with Government directives rather than delivering engaging lessons. Moreover, in concentrating on topical issues rather than the knowledge necessary to grasp subject areas, children’s educational horizons have been narrowed.
The lasting guarantee of a decent education
Posted by James Gubb in Civil Liberty, Education on 07/01/2010
In the Daily Telegraph this week, David Conway writes on the subject of his new book, Liberal Education and the National Curriculum, published by Civitas.
‘Critics of the national curriculum – and they are legion in our classrooms and teacher training colleges – seem curiously unaware that the first person to propose such a curriculum for England was Matthew Arnold.
Continued here.